Semantics impacts response to phonics through spelling intervention in children with dyslexia

We examined the response to a phonics through spelling intervention in 52 children with dyslexia by analyzing their phonological, morphological, and orthographical spelling errors both before and after the intervention whereas their spelling errors before the intervention were compared with those of 105 typically developing spellers. A possible compensatory role of semantics on the intervention effects was also investigated. Results showed that before the intervention, children with dyslexia and the typically developing children both made most morphological errors, followed by orthographic and phonological errors. Within each category, children with dyslexia made more errors than the typically developing children, with differences being largest for phonological errors. Children with dyslexia with better developed semantic representations turned out to make less phonological, morphological, and orthographic errors compared with children with dyslexia with less developed semantic representations. The intervention for children with dyslexia led to a reduction of all error types, mostly of the orthographic errors. In addition, semantics was related to the decline in phonological, morphological, and orthographic spelling errors. This study implicates that semantic stimulation could benefit the spelling development of children at risk for or with dyslexia.

Review of case law on notification of tax authorities on the controlled foreign companies

This article is dedicated to revelation and analysis of the gaps in legal regulation of profit taxation of controlled foreign companies (CFC) and notification of tax authorities on the controlled foreign companies via examining the available case law. The author determines six types of legal disputes that arise in the context of submission of participation notices in CFC, as well as CFC notices. Analysis is conducted on the methods of elimination of gaps in legislation of the Russian Federation on controlled foreign companies by introduction of point amendments to the current legislation on CFC. Settlement of legal disputes over interpretation of the Paragraph 7.1 of the Article 309.1 and Subparagraph 2 of the Paragraph 1 of the Article 25.13-1 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation requires supplementing the Article 25.14 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation with the Paragraph 3.2 of the following content: “The obligation on submitting the CFC notice does not depend on the financial results of CFC. The existence of tax exemption does not relieve of the duty to provide CFC notice”. The disputes often arise when the taxpayers default the submission period, and after receiving a request from the inspectorate, provide data for not only the companies listed in the request, but other companies as well. For avoiding any related disputes, it is recommended to supplement the Paragraph 2 of the Article 25.14 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation with the following content: “A revised notice cannot be submitted with regards to CFC, the information on which was not provided in the initial notice”. In order to minimize the actions of inspectorate “with unacceptable formalism”, it is recommended to supplement the Article 129.6 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation with the Paragraph 3 of the following content: “Submission of incomplete information or information containing technical or orthographic errors, which do not obstruct the identification of foreign company, are not considered a tax crime”.

Nomenclature changes in the "Entolomatoid fungi of western North America and Alaska" (Largent 1994)

Nomenclatural omissions and orthographic errors in my 1994 monograph are corrected. The three genera Calliderma, Clitopiloides, and Fibropilus were validly published in 1994 as stat. nov. based on infrageneric names, and their extraterritorial basionym type species are proposed here as Ca. callidermum comb. nov., Cl. cyathus comb. nov., and F. fumosifolius comb. nov. Names originally proposed as provisional are validated as Leptonia cyanea comb. nov., L. cyanea var. occidentalis var. nov., and Inocephalus appressus sp. nov. Nolanea names that were illegitimate later homonyms are proposed as N. undatomarginata comb. nov. and N. papillatoides comb. nov., based on published replacement names. The published validation of the invalid 1994 name "Leptonia violacea" is indicated, and seven orthographic epithet corrections are listed

AN ANALYSIS OF PHONETIC-PHONOLOGICAL AND ORTHOGRAPHIC ERRORS WHEN LEARNING SERBIAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

From the perspective of applied linguistics, this paper deals with the acquisition of Serbian as a foreign language by learners whose mother tongues are Lithuanian, Japanese, English and Bulgarian, and who spent one semester at the Centre for Serbian as a Foreign and Second Language at the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš. Working with a specific sample and using the analytical and error analysis method, we aim to identify the most common errors the speakers make at the phonetic-phonological and orthographic level,., the identified linguistic errors are classified into (a) errors occurring under the influence of the mother tongue; (b) errors as the result of the strict rules of the Serbian language system itself – interlingual errors; (c) errors arising from knowledge of another second language; and (d), errors resulting from the insecurity and insufficient acquisition of the Serbian language. By analyzing the sample, we conclude that the greatest number of errors at the phonetic-phonological and orthographic level occurred under the influence of their mother tongue (L1) on Serbian (L2).

Neural Machine Translation: Fine-Grained Evaluation of Google Translate Output for English-to-Arabic Translation

The neural machine translation (NMT) revolution is upon us. Since 2016, an increasing number of scientific publications have examined the improvements in the quality of machine translation (MT) systems. However, much remains to be done for specific language pairs, such as Arabic and English. This raises the question whether NMT is a useful tool for translating text from English to Arabic. For this purpose, 100 English passages were obtained from different broadcasting websites and translated using NMT in Google Translate. The NMT outputs were reviewed by three professional bilingual evaluators specializing in linguistics and translation, who scored the translations based on the translation quality assessment (QA) model. First, the evaluators identified the most common errors that appeared in the translated text. Next, they evaluated adequacy and fluency of MT using a 5-point scale. Our results indicate that mistranslation is the most common type of error, followed by corruption of the overall meaning of the sentence and orthographic errors. Nevertheless, adequacy and fluency of the translated text are of acceptable quality. The results of our research can be used to improve the quality of Google NMT output.

The characteristics of reading and orthography in children with dysgraphic handwriting

The aim of this study was to analyze the characteristics of reading and the orthographic level of handwriting in children with dysgraphic handwriting and children with typical development in the early grades of primary school. The research sample consisted of 94 children in the 3rd and 4th grades of primary school. The Handwriting Dysgraphia Assessment Test was used to assess the level of handwriting dysgraphia, while the analysis of the orhographic level of handwriting involved the assessment of the frequency and type of orthographic errors. The Three-Dimensional Reading Test was used in the second stage of research. Findings show the overall prevalence of handwriting dysgraphia in 13.8% of children, and a greater prevalence in boys (69.1%) relative to girls (30.9%). In the group of children with dysgraphic handwriting, 53.8% were categorized as having "graphomotor dysgraphia", while 46.2% were categorized as having "language dysgraphia". The study results suggest that there are no statistically significant differences between 3rd and 4th grade students in the application of orthographic rules to all writing tasks (t=1,33; df=11; p=0,17). Children with dysgraphic handwriting achieved poorer results on all writing tasks relative to children with typical development. A comparison of results of children with dysgraphic handwriting and children with typical development did not reveal statistically significant differences in reading speed tasks (t=1,10; df=18; p=0,32), number of mistakes (t=0,73; df=21; p=0,46), and reading comprehension (t=0,66; df=14; p=0,51). Increasing awareness of aspects of writing and reading where difficulties may occur, but also of aspects that represent children's developmental strengths, along with an effective assessment of language and cognitive abilities, would significantly improve the quality of the teaching process.

PRAVOPISNE GREŠKE U MEĐUJEZIKU SRBOFONIH STUDENATA KOJI UČE TIPOLOŠKI SRODNE JEZIKE (ITALIJANSKI KAO L2 I ŠPANSKI KAO L3)

The studies that analyze the interlanguage of plurilingual speakers have been the focus of linguists’ interest for the past three decades, since empirical researches have proved that both students’ mother tongue and non-mother tongue can be a resource for transfer when learning a new language. The paper analyzes orthographic errors made by Serbophone students of philology who study two typologically similar languages - Italian and Spanish, which arose as a result of a negative transfer from one language to another. The presented errors prove that the negative transfer is stronger in typologically closely related languages than in those that are not, regardless of the order of acquisition (De Bot, 1992; Williams & Hammarberg, 1998; Jarvis, 2000; De Angelis & Selinker, 2001; Cenoz, 2001; Ecke, 2001; Hammarberg, 2001; Ringbom, 2001). Due to the factors of language distance and psychotypology that influenced the appearance of transfers, it has been proved that interlinguistic similarities are the ones that caused the largest number of errors (Swan, 1997) and the appearance of negative lateral transfer, i.e. negative transfer from the second to the third language. The errors did not occur exclusively due to ignorance of the rules of the Spanish language, but they were caused by the influence that the knowledge of the previously acquired Italian had on learning Spanish. Thus, most of the errors were interlingual. Many errors identified in the corpus would not have been made by students who had previously learned another foreign language typologically distant from Spanish. As the largest number of orthographic errors was identified in words that are the same or similar in Italian and Spanish, the claim of many linguists (Williams & Hammarberg, 1998; Cenoz, 2001; De Angelis & Selinker, 2001; Ecke, 2001; Hammarberg, 2001; Ringbom, 2001) that the typological similarity between L2 and L3 facilitates language transfer has been proved. Thus, when studying transfer, one should pay attention not only to the influence of the mother tongue on the target language, but also to the influence of L2 on the target language, especially in the case when L2 is typologically closest to the L3.

Analisis Kesalahan Ortografi Bahasa Arab Mahasiswa Pendidikan Bahasa Arab Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang

This article is a study of Arabic Language Education students at the University of Muhammad Malang concerning spelling errors in writing Arabic characters. Orthography or Arabic alphabet spelling is a system that is generally used to realize the sound description from spoken language to written language in a language community, in this case Arabic. But in practice not everyone is able to describe the sound of language into writing correctly. Including students in the Arabic Language Study Program, University of Muhammadiyah Malang. This research is a descriptive type, in collecting data using observation techniques, documentation techniques, and interview techniques. The data analysis uses the orthographic equivalent method with basic techniques (orthographic sorting techniques) and advanced techniques (comparative correlation techniques). While the presentation of data uses informal variety. The results showed that the forms of orthographic errors or Arabic characters were first, one type of error consisting of adding vowels, reducing vowels or consonants, reducing consonant punctuation, and changing letters. Second, two or more types of errors. The factors underlying these mistakes are in terms of sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics.

Błędy (orto)graficzne w rosyjskojęzycznych wiadomościach przesyłanych na kartach pocztowych

The aim of the article is to analyse orthographic errors in Russian postcard messages from the second half of the 20th century. Nearly 240 orthographic errors retrieved from a corpus consisting of approximately 1000 Russian postcards have been classified and examined. The results of the study present the most common mistakes occurring in this type of correspondence.